Joseph Meifred and the Early Valved Horn in France

A pioneer of the valved horn

John Ericson

This article is based on my dissertation, which is an expansion
of materials published in the Horn Call Annual 4
(1992).

Joseph Meifred (1791-1867) was an active teacher, a student of
horn design, and a pioneer performer on the valved horn. A Cor
basse, Meifred studied the natural horn with Dauprat at the Paris
Conservatory, where he was awarded the First Prize for horn in 1818.
In 1833 the Paris Conservatory instituted a valved horn class with
Meifred as professor; he held this position until his retirement in
1864 [Coar, 156-57].

Meifred's Méthode pour le Cor Chromatique, ou à
Pistons, published in 1840, was the first method for the valved
horn written by a major performer. In the introduction Meifred put
forward five major objectives of his approach to performing on the
valved horn.

First. to give to the horn the sounds it is lacking;

Second. to re-establish proper intonation to some;

Third. to render notes that are muted sonorous, all the while
preserving those which are lightly stopped, for which the timbre
is very agreeable.

Fourth. to give the leading tone, in whatever the key or mode,
the countenance that it has in the natural range.

Fifth. to not to deprive composers of crook changes, each of
which has a special color [trans in Snedeker, diss,
148].

For artistic reasons, Meifred especially wanted to maintain the
use of some right-hand technique in his valved horn playing in order
to perform what he referred to as the "Notes sensibles"
[sensitive tones], particularly those a half step lower than
the tonic or the fifth of a key. To quote from the Méthode, "I
have advanced . . . that to want to prohibit all the stopped notes of
the horn, replacing them with open sounds, would be to inflict harm
on the countenance of the instrument and to make it to lose its
special character that gives it an indefinable charm." Meifred held
firm to the same underlying aesthetic of the natural horn that was
held by his teacher Dauprat; that the lightly stopped tones were very
expressive and what made the sound of the horn so unique and
beautiful (see the article Dauprat on the
Tone of the Natural Horn).

Meifred gave the following example to show how his valved horn
technique differed from natural horn technique. In addition to the
markings for the superior (whole step) and inferior (half step)
valves (the Méthode was for the two-valved horn), notes
to be taken lightly stopped and fully stopped are noted.

Cor ordinaire . . .

Cor à Pistons . . .

Example 1. Meifred, Méthode, p. 32.

Heavily stopped notes, such as written f' and d', were thus
avoided, while all leading tones were taken lightly stopped.

Meifred used the valves in part simply as crooking devices
[Snedeker, correspondence, 17]. In the first concert ever
given by the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire on
March 9, 1828, Meifred performed a valved horn solo that formally
introduced the new instrument to the French public [Morley-Pegge,
108]. The review of this solo appearance gives a clear picture of
how he applied this technique to the horn.

A solo for the valve horn, performed by Mr. Meifred, to
whom is owed its improvements, gave an advanced idea of all the
resources one can find on this instrument. Difficult passages,
unperformable on the ordinary [natural] horn, and multiple
modulations were played by Mr. Meifred with a facility that
demonstrated even to less-informed listeners the advantages of the
new process [Fetis, trans. in Snedeker, diss, 26-27].

The most significant point is that the work contained multiple
modulations. Meifred was especially concerned with preserving the
proper relationships of open and half-stopped sounds in new tonal
areas. The valves were used as crooking devices only in the sense
that a short-term modulation was found in the music to a key area
that had many notes available using one fingering, the "effective"
key being those produced by a crook and the "false" keys being those
produced by the valves [Meifred, 28, 47, 70]. No reference
was made in the Méthode to using the valves to crook
the instrument into new keys for long-term use as a hand-horn;
clearly Meifred did not see the valved horn as a type of omnitonic
horn. [What Was the Omnitonic
Horn?]

In the preface to the section on transposition, Meifred stated in
regard to orchestral playing that "It will always be better, in the
interest of execution, to use the crook indicated by the Composer . .
. ." It is in this context that transposition is explained by
Meifred. A chart in the Méthode shows how to transpose
every key to the F crook by clef.

It is important that Meifred, a major performer and teacher, used
the technique of transposition. That he was, however, anxious to
maintain the use of the full range of crooks was clearly shown in the Méthode. He stated that the first valved horns that
were made in Germany were constructed in F and could not change keys,
a design which he modified to allow the instrument to be crooked in
several keys; the most significant modification was the addition of
tuning slides on the valves which could be adjusted for those keys. A
valved horn of this design would be ideal to perform the following
example which Meifred gave from the Marche Funèbre of
Dauprat's Quatuors, Op. 8. Meifred maintained the use of the
originally requested crooks and gave fingerings for valved horns
pitched in G, F, and D. Especially notable are the varied fingerings,
which treated some pitches as either open or covered tones, depending
on the harmonic context.

Meifred worked diligently to promote and develop the valved horn
and its technique in France (with only limited success; after Meifred
retired from the Conservatory the valved horn was not taught there
again until 1896 and was not officially recognized by the
Conservatory until 1903 [Morley-Pegge et. al., vol. 2, 245]).
Through his technical approach, Meifred was able to maintain much of
the tonal character of the natural horn on the valved horn. Timbre
variations were considered an inherent part of the sound of the
horn.